Popular support for an Australian republic has been steadily shrinking since the 1999 referendum.

According to the most recent Fairfax-Nielsen poll, it is the generation who would have no real recollection of the referendum – those aged between 18 and 24 years – who are particularly alienated from the idea. Only 24 per cent of young respondents in the latest survey backed the idea of an Australian head of state. So does this apparent generational shift prove the monarchy is long to reign over us? Hardly. After suffering a tough setback in 1999, republicans reacted by promptly walking off the field. Little wonder then that monarchists have had an easy time chipping away at our lead.

Yet honest republicans and monarchists alike have to admit that ours is not a debate that engenders hardline decisiveness among the majority of voters. Sentiment on the question is squishier than a baby prince’s cheeks. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise when the latest poll – taken in the midst of excitement about the Official Royal Baby Tour Extravaganza – shows an unusually strong swing toward the Windsors.

Growing up in a 21st century in which the republican debate has hardly raged, young Australians appear happy to bend to the latest breeze on the issue.

A national UMR poll – conducted last year in the wake of former governor-general
Quentin Bryce
’s speech in favour of a republic – found 50 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds agreed with the GG, versus just 23 per cent who were opposed.

Young people, it seems, are completely open to being convinced.

So to argue, as the Young Monarchists’ Committee’s Rachel Bailes has in these pages, that Gen Y is increasingly monarchist because we are rebelling against our republican parents, is a stretch. I credit young Australians with a little more political nous than simply rebelling against what our folks think is cool.

Natural confidence

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And if there’s anything that’s anathema to the values of this new generation its an institution that excludes on the basis of sex, religion, and lineage. The natural confidence and optimism of young Australians is not a natural fit with a political system that prohibits them from becoming head of state of their own country.

So what of Ms Bailes’s other argument – that Buckingham Palace provides an “above the fray" element of stability that protects us from the “political ruling class"?

That holds only as long as you do not look any deeper into history than 1975. As a member of Gen Y, I know that’s well before our time, but we can Google: the Dismissal. I don’t think too many young Australians would take comfort in the fact we have precedent of a democratically-elected Australian prime minister being removed by the representative of a foreign monarch, supposedly anointed by God.

And when it comes to our representation on the world stage, young Australians, who speak modern marketing and consumer capitalism as a native tongue, would understand the need for some serious re-branding. Set against a titanic shift of power from West to East, the projection of Brand Australia as a junior colonial subsidiary of a grander Anglo empire has surely had its day. We are among the 12 largest economies in the world. We are a powerful independent democracy in the world’s most dynamic region. Our national brand should reflect this. I firmly believe that one of our own citizens is best placed to represent this vision of modern Australia. Because exclusionary symbols like the monarchy tug at the threads of our multicultural pluralist society.

They allow Anglo-Australians to feel our nationhood is tied to cultural identity rather than an institutional framework of fairness, equality, and the rule of law. How can we say to Asia we are of them – that we don’t merely see them as a cash cow for our abundant goods – when we wave the flag of a distant nation’s monarch?

Australia needs unifying symbols of inclusion and inspiration, not faded emblems of a world that exists only in kitschy magazine nostalgia. It is up to republicans to make the case. We can be modern while honouring our history and our colonial roots. We need to reassure the new generation our glamorous royal relatives will still visit even if we show the rest of the world we’ve moved out of home. Australians will still be free to find Prince George adorable if we’re a republic – we’ll just do it as grown ups.